limiting the development, testing, and deployment of defensive weapons systems.
Reagan danced to the edge of the limits of the ABM Treaty as he developed his Strategic Defense Initiative, dubbed Star Wars by his opponents. Exploiting America’s vast lead in computer technology, he sought to develop a shield to protect us from incoming missiles.
The left throughout the world was outraged by Star Wars and, although it was never really developed, fighting against defensive weapons became a cause celebre on the left.
George W. Bush opted out of the ABM Treaty (the document allowed this) in 2002 and announced that we would not be bound by its provisions any longer. The Bush administration noted that the real threat was no longer a massive Soviet missile strike, but terrorist or rogue states like Iran or North Korea launching missiles to hit the US or Israel. While Star Wars was never able to stop twelve thousand Soviet ICBMs from hitting American targets, it has developed to the point where it can be relied upon to shoot down smaller numbers of missiles.
American plans to base defensive missiles in postcommunist Eastern Europe raised Russian hackles and rallied the European left to oppose the deployment. But, to be truly effective, anti-missile systems need to be based in outer space, where they can hit enemy missiles during their slow-moving launch phase. This strategy has the added advantage that the radioactive debris would fall on the aggressor nation.
Now the European left has devised a backdoor way to stop defense deployments of outer space weapons— the Code of Conduct.
But, as John Bolton points out, we have vital security interests in space that the proposed code may hobble. Bolton writes, “Outer space has become the next frontier for American national security and business. From space, we follow terrorists and intercept their communications, detect foreign military deployments, and monitor a proliferation of unconventional weapons. Our Global Positioning System gives us targeting and tactical advantages, spacecraft create image-rich maps, and satellites beam data around the world.”3
And, we hope, we can deploy satellites and anti-missile missiles to shoot down whatever Tehran and Pyongyang are prepared to launch against us.
The Europeans have been at work on a Code of Conduct for four years. In January 2012, Hillary announced that the US would not join the EU code as a signatory, but would promise to abide by its provisions even as we proceeded to negotiate an international code of conduct for space. Bolton calls this maneuver “a transparent end run around the constitutional requirement that the Senate ratify all treaties.”4
Bolton explains that “Obama is eroding American sovereignty on the sly. He knows that an arms-control treaty for space is unlikely. He barely managed to push the new strategic arms reduction treaty with Russia—a bad deal—through the Senate.”5 So, Bolton argues, he and Hillary are cooking up a “code of conduct” to limit US activities without requiring Senate approval.
The administration argues that the code exempts security activities that are for self-defense, but Bolton points out that this “term [is] often defined narrowly to include only cross-border attacks. We should not take the unnecessary risk that our rivals will exploit such ambiguity to prevent legitimate American actions. Taken literally, the European Union code would interfere with our ability to develop antiballistic missile systems in space, test antisatellite weapons and gather intelligence.”6
ADVANTAGE: CHINA
And, of course, our adversaries won’t give the code a second thought. In 2007, China created about half of the outer space debris currently encircling the earth when it shot down a weather satellite. The code would do little to stop Iran, North Korea, Russia, or China from using outer space to counter US technological advantages.
Bolton says that “in a war, China could potentially destroy our satellites and still retain its own GPS capabilities.”7 An analysis prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and submitted to the House Armed Services Committee says that “if the United States were to make a good-faith effort at implementing the requirements of the draft Code, it would most likely have an adverse impact on military operations.”8
Because it could not hope to get the Code of Conduct through the Senate, the Obama administration maintains that it is not a binding treaty, but only a voluntary guideline for conduct. Michael Listner, of
But, while technically the code is not legally binding, congressmen have been quick to note that it would guide the writing and implementation of regulations that would govern NASA, the Defense Department, and commercial firms operating in space.
Congressmen Michael Turner (R-OH) and Joe Heck (R-NV) and Senators John Kyl (R-AZ) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) argue that while the code would be nonbinding, it would nonetheless “require the Department of Defense and the intelligence community to implement regulations, which would be binding and could influence both the national and economic security of the United States.”10 The letter also warns that the regulations could impede the “growing commercial space market and the jobs that are created from it.”11
Dr. Robert Zubrin, president of Pioneer Astronautics and the author of
Imagine you are a Pentagon colonel, trying to advance your program to develop an anti-satellite weapon system. You need to conduct an in-space test to validate it. You will be told by the brass above you to forget it, because such a test would violate the Code, and it’s far above their pay grade to do anything to alter the rules. Now imagine that you are a scientist or engineer doing defense work. You have a new idea for an anti-satellite system, but its development would require in-space testing that might create space debris. Your proposal to start development will be rejected on sight, should you be so intemperate as to not censor the idea yourself.12
Zubrin cites as an example of how such a code can become binding in fact, the “planetary protection” agreements reached by the international nongovernmental Committee of Space Research (COSPAR), which have “crippled NASA efforts to mount a mission to Mars to retrieve samples of its soil.” He explains that
a few bureaucrats meeting together at COSPAR come to an agreement imposing all sorts of difficult requirements on any sample return mission in order to avoid the (nonexistent) threat of back-contamination of Mars. For example, COSPAR requires that the MSR mission “break the chain” of contact between the Mars surface and Earth, which means that instead of directly returning the sample from Mars, there will need to be an autonomous rendezvous and dock in Mars orbit (which has never been done), and the mission will have to be done with two spacecraft, instead of one, increasing costs and greatly adding to mission risk (since BOTH spacecraft need to succeed in order for the mission to succeed). As a result of such imperatives, current NASA designs for the MSR mission are excessively complex and expensive, so much so that the program is now dead in the water. But if you challenge the engineers involved on why they incorporated such irrational features into their design, they will answer that they had to do so, because our COSPAR agreements require it. Thus the mission is killed in the design phase, because it is far above the pay grade of the engineering teams attempting to make it a reality to change the rules. The same dynamic would take hold to block the work of those seeking to develop space defense systems should the Code be put in place.13
The fact is that the Obama administration is using the Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities to shift momentum away from a robust development of space defense, even at a time when it has had little success in curbing the missile programs of Iran and North Korea. Space-based interceptors and satellites are our best protection against these threats and Obama seems intent on giving it away.
But the broader point of the Code of Conduct is that it takes yet another sphere of activity now dominated by the United States and attempts to subject it to global regulation and governance. With the complicity and outright
